Leaked Manning Statement

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has just published this leaked, unreleased audio recording of Bradley Manning describing his response to the July 12, 2007 Baghdad Apache airstrike video that documented the killing of two Reuters journalists. This speech was given to the military court in Ft. Meade. Bradley speaks to his motivations for leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.

"While unofficial transcripts of this statement are available," Freedom of the Press Foundation's Trevor Timm and Rainey Reitman wrote, "this marks the first time the American public has heard the actual voice of Manning.

In the speech, he explains why he leaked; he believed the WikiLeaks files were evidence of government wrongdoing, and he hoped their the release would "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan."